. Then
there were the Independents proper, drawn from all those various
Evangelical Sects, however named separately, whose principle of
Independency stopped short of absolute Voluntaryism, and therefore
did not prevent them from belonging to a State-Church. The more
moderate of these Independents might easily enough, in consistency
with their theory of Congregationalism, join the quasi-Presbyterian
Associations, and some of them did so; but not very many. The
majority of them were simply ministers of the State-Church, in charge
of individual parishes and congregations, and consulting each other,
if at all, only in informal ways. Among the Independent Sectaries of
all sorts thus officiating individually in the State-Church, the
difficulty, as far as one can see, must have been chiefly, or solely,
with the _Baptists_. How could preachers who rejected the rite
of Infant Baptism, maintained the necessity of the rebaptism of
adults, and thought dipping the proper form of the rite, be ministers
of parishes, or be included in any way among the State-clergy? That
such ministers did hold livings in Cromwell's Established Church is a
fact. Mr. John Tombes, the chief of the Anti-Paedobaptists, and
himself one of Cromwell's Triers, retained the vicarage of Leominster
in Herefordshire, with the parsonage of Boss in the same county, and
a living at Bewdley in Worcestershire; and there are other instances.
Baxter's language already quoted implies nothing less, indeed, than
that Anti-Paedobaptists in considerable numbers were presented to
Church-livings by the patrons and passed by the Triers; and he
elsewhere signifies that he did not himself greatly object to this.
"Let there be no withdrawing," he says, "from the ministry and church
of that place [i.e. a parish of mixed Paedobaptists and
Anti-Paedobaptists] upon the mere ground of Baptism. If the minister
be an Anabaptist, let not us withdraw from him on that ground; and,
if he be a Paedobaptist, let not _them_ withdraw from _us_."
He even suggests that the pastor of a church might openly record his
opinion on the Baptism subject, if it were contrary to that of the
majority of the members, and then proceed in his pastorate all the
same, and that, on the other hand, private members might publicly
enter their dissent from their pastor's opinion, and yet abide with
him lovingly and obediently in all other things. How far, and in how
many places, this method of leaving Paedo-baptism an